These quotes were in a story about the gulf oil spill in the New York Times on Sunday (May 16):

“Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.

“BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“‘The answer is no to that,’ a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said Saturday. ‘It is not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.’”

Gulf oil spill (U.S. Coast Guard)

Why is the U.S. government allowing BP to control the release of important information about the oil spill? The government should be SPEARHEADING efforts to gain scientific information on this terrible spill.

Is there a reason that BOTH our government AND BP don’t want us to know how much oil is REALLY gushing into the gulf? /Gary

Of course, BP doesn’t want the government, or anyone, for that matter, to know how much is really leaking, because they will be fined based on that amount. By saying there’s only 210,000 gallons a day leaking (and they are mysteriously collecting 600,000 gallons a day as a percentage of what’s leaking), they are hoping they will only be fined based on their extremely low estimates, and not the actual rate.

The rate has EVERYTHING to do with the clean up efforts, as if there is 10 times more oil than you anticipated is coming out, that oil has to go somewhere, like staying under water, or moving toward additional currents, etc., and has a great deal to do with the clean up efforts and planning.

For BP to have the authority to say “no” to scientists wanting to review how much oil is really leaking is crazy. Obama should be REQUIRING that information, and that it be made public.

If enough people boycot BP over this, then maybe they will actually pay attention with all of their profit they’ve made off of us over the past years!

They should have been collecting the oil as it rose, rather than waiting til it reached shore to try to contain it. This whole mess could have been minimized if they had their head on their shoulders, and based their clean up on how much oil was actually leaking, instead of their “estimate”.

I took one look at the video, the first grainy video, and got out a calculator. Now I’m no scientist, but I can tell you that there was MUCH more than 2.43 gallons coming out of that well in a given “second”. Maybe multiply that by, say, TEN!

I think it’s just sad that they are waiting for the animals to get coated in oil before they are willing to act. There should be no volunteers helping with this clean up effort. BP should have thousands, well, hundreds of thousands of paid employees working the coastline by sea and on shore, working on the clean up and prevention of further damage. Who is telling them they have to do this? Nobody. Nice job, government “oversight” committee…